Seahawks tickets available Monday morning, but only for certain states

Originally published January 12, 2014 at 7:17 pm

Updated January 15, 2014 at 12:41 pm

The Seattle Seahawks will put what is estimated to be a few thousand tickets for the NFC Championship Game on sale Monday at 10 a.m.

In a news release announcing the sale, the team warned that tickets are “expected to sell quickly.”

That was true last week when the Seahawks put a similar number of tickets on sale for its NFC divisional playoff game against the Saints. Those tickets were gone almost as soon as they went on sale, as the team announced via Twitter less than 30 minutes later that they were all sold.

Ticket numbers are scarce to begin with since the team sold out of its allotment of 62,000 season tickets in a stadium that seats just over 68,000.

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The Seahawks also announced that tickets will be available only to fans with a billing address in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii and Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, an attempt to keep the tickets in the hands of local fans. Fans can purchase tickets through Seahawks.com or by calling Ticketmaster at 800-745-3000.

Once those tickets are gone, the only alternative for fans who don’t have a ticket but want to attend the game is the secondary market. The resale of tickets at prices different than face value is legal in Washington.

Once the rival 49ers beat Carolina to advance to the NFC Championship, secondary market ticket prices that were already at a record high increased even more.

StubHub.com had just under 6,000 tickets available as of 4 p.m. Sunday, according to a website official. The lowest price was $461.50, which would be a record high for a Seattle sporting event. Tickets for the contest against the Saints were being sold for about $150 the day before the game.

A spokesman for the resale ticket market data source TiqIQ reported Sunday afternoon that the average ticket price for the Seahawks-49ers game was just under $700.

That was actually lower than the average price for a few other recent NFC title games. According to TiqIQ, here are the average resale ticket prices and lowest-ticket price for the last four NFC title games:

• 2010, Minnesota at New Orleans: $744.20; $324

• 2011, Green Bay at Chicago: $1,157.23; $240

• 2012, New York Giants at San Francisco: $597.17; $282

• 2013, San Francisco at Atlanta: $362.79, $162.

Sunday’s game is the only time Seattle has hosted a conference title game other than the 2005 season, when the Seahawks beat Carolina 34-14 to advance to their only Super Bowl appearance. That year, the lowest price was around $200.

Notes

Seattle rookie running back Spencer Ware was arrested on suspicion of DWI early Sunday morning and booked into King County Jail.

Ware, a 2013 sixth-round pick out of LSU, played sparingly in the first two games of the season before spraining his ankle and later being placed on injured reserve, making him ineligible to play for the rest of the season.